Today's buzz word may be the term "persistent universe," but Jeff Gomez has studied and constructed self-contained worlds since he was struck by a double-dose of contemporary mythology as a teenager in 1977. Inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and George Lucas's Star Wars, Jeff decided to hit the books and learn what inspired the maestros. These included everything from The Prose Edda to Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and what he found helped to formulate the heroes, villains and vistas on these pages.